The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.
—Chuck Palahniuk
A statistical fact (Sawyer)
You have theory of mind; you ascribe to others the feelings you yourself have, and for "others," read just about anything at all: "nature abhors a vacuum," "temperatures seek an equilibrium," "selfish genes." There's no drive to survive in biology. Yes, things that survive will be more plentiful than those that don't. But that's just a statistical fact, not an indicator of desire.
Robert J. Sawyer, from WWW: Wonder
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